THE DIARY OF A DOCTOR WHO TELLS

Evening Star, Issue 24476, 10 April 1943, Page 3

THE DIARY OF A DOCTOR WHO TELLS

" BAY-WINDOWS " Monday! April 5. The Ear-Nose-and-Throat Bloke was in an aggressive mood at afternoon tea to-day. "Hullo," he said boisterously to the Junior .Surgeon as he came in. " why don't you do something about your ' Day-window ': j Otherwise you'll never be able to see your toes again." " I'm not a physician," said the Junior Surgeon, " but having operated ou u nuinuer of stout peopie ot VU years and over I'm not uudiuy pessimistic about my expectation of life." The ivN. and T. Bloke turned to our elderly physician, who has come out of retirement to give a hand these war days. " You've probably seen more bodies than anybody else in the room. What's your view ou this problem of ovenveignt in the middle-aged Y" " I'm just a has-been." said Father genially. '• It just seems to me thut you're built that way or you're not built that way." "But you ■must admit that your weight goes up or down according to whether you eat or starve." said the Junior Physician. "Maybe," said Father. "1 know that Ted Marshall and I have been friends for 40 years, long before he was a surgeon, let alone the Senior Surgeon hern; I also know Ted eats twice as much as 1 do and remains twice as thin." " From a practical angle all I. can tell you is that 1 like young people to be slightly overweight, and I don't like middle-aged people to be too much overweight." I like the story of the over-fat girl who had been brought by isr mother to consult a plump doctor. ""Well," said the doctor genially, when the consultation was over. "So we're going to lose 20 pounds, elf?" " I'll lose .10 if you lose 10," said the child promptly. Tuesday, April 6. " Mareia's always getting colds," complained Mrs Keton, concerning her 14-year-old daughter. " She's healthy enough otherwise. "Her chief trouble, she says, is that she's almost permanently without a keen sense of smell." " Jf that was all she had to worry about, be so much," 1 replied. " Smelling, however, ( is just a small part of the work of the nose. It's most undesirable to have it stuffed up frequently." " What else can happen?" asked Mrs Keton. " The most important fact is that it is actually the entrance to the lungs," I replied. " Tts principal job is to warm and moisten the air at its first point of entrance into the body. " Another important fact is that the nose is connected with the large bony cavities in the face and head, known as sinuses. Normally, these are filled with air, but when the nose gets infected the sinuses often follow suit. Then you may be in for a pack of trouble." "Well, what can we do about it?" demanded Mrs Keton. "Early nights,," I said. " Bed by 9 o'clock, practically every night.' By the way, your room should have the window, oDen top and bottom." " Can J sleep out?" said Marcia. "By all means." I replied. " Then there's food. You've got to have plenty of vitamin foods. And I think you'd bettet go on a course of one of the liver oils to build you up for the winter." . ~, •

Wednesday, April 7. \" The trouble with you doctors," said George Barnett frankly, " is that yon get a fad and it becomes temporarily the answer to nil the things .you can't otherwise' explain. " Think of the time you pulled everybody's teeth out looking for what you called a septic focus. Now everything is psychological.

" I come to you with severe headaches at the back of my head and you tell me they're (psychological. Don't 1 know whether I've got a headache or not?"

" I never said you hadn't got a headache." I retorted. "1 merely tried to explain why you had it, and had it in combination with lack of appetite, insomnia, and lack of concentration."

" Well, I say there's something wrong inside me somewhere." retorted Frank. " and it's not imagination." " No one said that it was imagination," T said. " There's a vast difference between imaginative conditions and nhychological ones." " But how can mere thought cause physical signs and symptoms?" he retorted

" A slap on the face and a blush caused by-embarrassment cause the same red mark on the cheek," I reminded him.

Thursday, April 8. A sign of the times is the growing interest in the scientific side of food. Scarcely a day goes by now without someone asking me something about food, health, and vitamins.

To-dav Mrs Cranley said she had been told by a young niece' who came to ten last night on her way homo from the university that she was throwing the best part of the lettuce away. " And I gave her a lovely young lettuce with a delicious heart." she said. "It's true that the outside' leaves have more food value than the centre." I said. " That goes for all green vegetables." " But the outside leaves are sometimes so tough." she protested. "Yes." 1 agreed! "Save them for soup. By the way," I added, " you know that in cooking green vegetables it's more scientific to use only just enough water to keep the pan from burning?" Mrs Cranley said she knew that, and added that she also knew you shouldn't soak them for too long. Friday, April 9. I can go into a thousand homes and announce that a member of the family has stomach, kidney, liver, or bladder trouble without once being asked ivhether the condition is infectious. But if I visit 10 homes in which tlivre is a skin condition worrying one of the family I shall be asked in each and every home whether it is infectious. The question was put to me in two homes to-day. One (patient had a skin rash, due to being allergic to a certain plant, and the other had psoriasis. I said there was no infection in either case. Actuallv. very few skin troubles can be transmitted to other humans. j Names in This Diary Fictitious. I (Copyright.)